Editorial: Was spying on protesters necessary?

By Wilmington StarNews/Haifax Media Group

Published: Monday, October 14, 2013 at 04:16 PM.

Anarchists. That’s how the chief of the legislature’s police force characterizes the teachers, unemployed workers, young people, working people, senior citizens, parents and members of the clergy who converged on Raleigh for the “Moral Monday” protests.

That’s why police attended organizational meetings called by the protesters, who were exercising their First Amendment right of assembly. Some employed the tactics of the civil rights movement, allowing themselves to be arrested by refusing to leave the taxpayer-funded Legislative Building.

The chief of the General Assembly’s police force, Jeff Weaver, testified that he and his officers were on the lookout for these anarchists, who apparently had been identified by law enforcement prior to the beginning of the weekly protests at the Legislative Building.

Weaver made the statement while testifying in the trial of one of the 900 people arrested over the course of several weeks.

The weekly protests drew thousands of people, most of them ordinary North Carolinians who had a beef with legislation that negatively affected them or people they knew. The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP organized the protests as a peaceful show of disapproval, with some civil disobedience thrown in.

As both police and organizers noted, the meetings were not secret, and they were open to anyone who wished to attend. The Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, said the group would have welcomed officers had they known they were present. Mmm, perhaps. We’ll never know. However, if any officers were in the room while attorneys were advising the group on how to conduct themselves and what to do if they were arrested, the courts could find that police violated the protesters’ rights.

Weaver was understandably reluctant to go into further detail about the surveillance efforts, nor did he define what the police meant by the term “anarchist.”

Anarchists. That’s how the chief of the legislature’s police force characterizes the teachers, unemployed workers, young people, working people, senior citizens, parents and members of the clergy who converged on Raleigh for the “Moral Monday” protests.

That’s why police attended organizational meetings called by the protesters, who were exercising their First Amendment right of assembly. Some employed the tactics of the civil rights movement, allowing themselves to be arrested by refusing to leave the taxpayer-funded Legislative Building.

The chief of the General Assembly’s police force, Jeff Weaver, testified that he and his officers were on the lookout for these anarchists, who apparently had been identified by law enforcement prior to the beginning of the weekly protests at the Legislative Building.

Weaver made the statement while testifying in the trial of one of the 900 people arrested over the course of several weeks.

The weekly protests drew thousands of people, most of them ordinary North Carolinians who had a beef with legislation that negatively affected them or people they knew. The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP organized the protests as a peaceful show of disapproval, with some civil disobedience thrown in.

As both police and organizers noted, the meetings were not secret, and they were open to anyone who wished to attend. The Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, said the group would have welcomed officers had they known they were present. Mmm, perhaps. We’ll never know. However, if any officers were in the room while attorneys were advising the group on how to conduct themselves and what to do if they were arrested, the courts could find that police violated the protesters’ rights.

Weaver was understandably reluctant to go into further detail about the surveillance efforts, nor did he define what the police meant by the term “anarchist.”

A true anarchist who plots the violent overthrow of the government is a legitimate threat. Weaver didn’t identify any of the alleged anarchists involved in the generally peaceable protests.

The vast majority of those arrested certainly didn’t fit that description anymore than did the veterans who were threatened with arrest for attempting to visit privately funded and open-air monuments on the National Mall in a particularly petty enforcement of the government shutdown. Perhaps this post-9/11 mentality has everyone looking over their shoulder.

Police need to keep order, and protesters were well aware that they would be arrested if they disobeyed orders to leave the Legislative Building. The question is whether it was necessary to go the extra step and spy on organizers. After recent revelations about the amount of information the federal government has collected on average Americans, this is a particularly touchy subject.

No doubt parties on all sides of the Moral Monday protests might do a few things differently next time. Are there ways to present a determined show of force that don’t involve inviting arrest in the Legislative Building? Could the legislative police lighten up on peaceful protests that aren’t overtly disruptive? It is, after all, the people’s building.

And regardless of how one feels about the legislature’s political agenda, under what circumstances are police justified – and not justified – in infiltrating groups that have openly been planning a peaceful protest?